Characters from Star Wars pose for a photocall to promote the release of Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace 3D at The London Eye on February 8, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Dave J. Hogan/Getty Images)

Ratko Mladic makes his first appearance at the International Criminal Tribunal on June 3, 2011 in The Hague, Netherlands. Ex-Bosnian Serb army leader Ratko Mladic will make his first appearance at The Hague war crimes tribunal after being declared fit to stand trial. Mladic was arrested a week ago after going into hiding for the past 16 years and is charged with atrocities committed during the Bosnian war. (Photo Serge Ligtenberg/Getty Images )

In the spring of 1965, within weeks of 3,500 American Marines arriving in Vietnam, a 39-year-old Briton named Larry Burrows began work on a feature for LIFE magazine, chronicling the day-to-day experience of U.S. troops on the ground – and in the air – in the midst of the rapidly widening war. The photographs in this gallery focus on a calamitous March 31, 1965, helicopter mission; Burrows’ “report from Da Nang”, featuring his pictures and his personal account of the harrowing operation, was published two weeks later as a now-famous cover story in the April 16, 1965, issue of LIFE.

Photo: Man your battle stations: The crew chief of helicopter Yankee Papa 13, lance corporal James C. Farley, mans an M-60 machine gun during a mission near Da Nang, Vietnam on March 31, 1965. (Photo by Larry Burrows/Time & Life Pictures)

A member of the 324 Squadron during the Anzac Day dawn service at Coogee Beach in Sydney, Australia on 23 April 2019. Anzac Day, held annually on 25 April, is a national day of remembrance across Australia and New Zealand, which commemorates the people who lost their lives or served in wars and conflicts. The day coincides with the first landing of the Anzacs at Gallipoli, Turkey, in World War One. (Photo by Steven Saphore/Australian Associated Press)

Members of the Albert Battery perform a gun salute during the Anzac Day dawn service held by the Currumbin RSL on the Gold Coast in Currumbin, Australia, 25 April 2016. The Anzac day marks the landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) troops at Gallipoli in what is today Turkey during WWI. World War One, also called the Great War, according to official statistics cost more than 37 million military and civilian casualties between 1914 and 1918. (Photo by Glenn Hunt/EPA)

Singer Halsey has her dress adjusted before she poses during the premiere of the film “The Huntsman: Winter's War” in Los Angeles, California, April 11, 2016. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Reuters)

Girls lead a gaggle of geese, backdropped by a banner against the war in Ukraine, during a Saint Martin's Day procession next to Charles Bridge in Prague, Czech Republic, Friday, November 11, 2022. Saint Martin's day marks the end of the harvest season as well as the start of winter. (Photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo)

Mount Sinabung looks calm as seen from Karo, North Sumatra at dawn on August 8, 2021. (Photo by Tibta Nangin/AFP Photo)